This project is a comparative study of ethnic identifications and the functions, change, and persistence in such identifications reflecting structural and situational variables within an area of rural Wisconsin. The study concentrates upon a number of different ethnic collectivities, Yankees, Norwegians, Bohemians, and Italians. Within a single county each of these tends to concentrate in different areas, though with some overlap. With the exception of the Bohemians (Czechs) who came to the area at the turn of the century, all the groups have been in the county since the mid-nineteenth century. While the Bohemians and Italians would generally be identified as "ethnic" and Catholic, the Norwegians and Yankees would be considered as commonly white anglo-saxon protestant. Each of these populations will have addressed to it the questions, "Do they identify themselves in terms of their ethnic background? Are they so identified by others? Under what circumstances are other identifications utilized, such as those of social class and religion? How do these identifications relate to social institutions, informal groups, and social networks and the material and social resources of the area?" The theoretical and methodological framework for this research reflects and is guided by F. Barth's analysis of ethnicity, modified and supplemented by M.M. Gordon's concept of "ethclass" and his conceptual distinction between acculturation and assimilation. Finally, since an aspect of the problem of identification may be viewed as a problem in folk social classification, ethnoscientific techniques will be utilized in an effort to describe and analyze the relevant systems of terminology.